• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.521-535
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• 2015

Vibration-based monitoring is one approach used to perform structural condition assessment. By measuring structural response, such as displacement, dynamic characteristics of a structure may be estimated. Often, the primary dynamic responses in civil structures are below 5 Hz, making accurate low frequency measurement critical for successful dynamic characterization. In addition, static deflection measurements are useful for structural capacity and load rating assessments. This paper presents a DC coupled continuous wave radar to accurately detect both dynamic and static displacement. This low-cost radar sensor provides displacement measurements within a compact, wireless unit appropriate for a range of structural monitoring applications. The hardware components and operating mechanism of the radar are introduced and a series of laboratory experiments are presented to assess the performance characteristics of the radar. The laboratory and field experiments investigate the effect of factors such as target distance, motion amplitude, and motion frequency on the radar's measurement accuracy. The results demonstrate that the radar is capable of both static and dynamic displacement measurements with sub-millimeter accuracy, making it a promising technology for structural health monitoring.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1107-1127
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• 2016

Studies on dynamic characteristics of the hanger vibration using field monitoring data are important for the design and evaluation of high-speed railway truss arch bridges. This paper presents an analysis of the hanger's dynamic displacement responses based on field monitoring of Dashengguan Yangtze River Bridge, which is a high-speed railway truss arch bridge with the longest span throughout the world. The three vibration parameters, i.e., dynamic displacement amplitude, dynamic load factor and vibration amplitude, are selected to investigate the hanger's vibration characteristics in each railway load case including the probability statistical characteristics and coupled vibration characteristics. The influences of carriageway and carriage number on the hanger's vibration characteristics are further investigated. The results indicate that: (1) All the eight railway load cases can be successfully identified according to the relationship of responses from strain sensors and accelerometers in the structural health monitoring system. (2) The hanger's three vibration parameters in each load case in the longitudinal and transverse directions have obvious probabilistic characteristics. However, they fall into different distribution functions. (3) There is good correlation between the hanger's longitudinal/transverse dynamic displacement and the main girder's transverse dynamic displacement in each load case, and their relationships are shown in the hysteresis curves. (4) Influences of the carriageway and carriage number on the hanger's three parameters are different in both longitudinal and transverse directions; while the influence on any of the three parameters presents an obvious statistical trend. The present paper lays a good foundation for the further analysis of train-induced hanger vibration and control.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.827-838
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• 2021

The dynamic displacement is considered to be an important indicator of structural safety, and becomes an indispensable part of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system for high-speed railway bridges. This paper proposes an indirect strain based dynamic displacement reconstruction methodology for high-speed railway box girders. For the typical box girders under eccentric train load, the plane section assumption and elementary beam theory is no longer applicable due to the bend-torsion coupling effects. The monitored strain was decoupled into bend and torsion induced strain, pre-trained multi-output support vector regression (M-SVR) model was employed for such decoupling process considering the sensor layout cost and reconstruction accuracy. The decoupled strained based displacement could be reconstructed respectively using box girder plate element analysis and mode superposition principle. For the transformation modal matrix has a significant impact on the reconstructed displacement accuracy, the modal order would be optimized using particle swarm algorithm (PSO), aiming to minimize the ill conditioned degree of transformation modal matrix and the displacement reconstruction error. Numerical simulation and dynamic load testing results show that the reconstructed displacement was in good agreement with the simulated or measured results, which verifies the validity and accuracy of the algorithm proposed in this paper.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.935-956
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• 2016

With the help of advanced image acquisition and processing technology, the vision-based measurement methods have been broadly applied to implement the structural monitoring and condition identification of civil engineering structures. Many noncontact approaches enabled by different digital image processing algorithms are developed to overcome the problems in conventional structural dynamic displacement measurement. This paper presents three kinds of image processing algorithms for structural dynamic displacement measurement, i.e., the grayscale pattern matching (GPM) algorithm, the color pattern matching (CPM) algorithm, and the mean shift tracking (MST) algorithm. A vision-based system programmed with the three image processing algorithms is developed for multi-point structural dynamic displacement measurement. The dynamic displacement time histories of multiple vision points are simultaneously measured by the vision-based system and the magnetostrictive displacement sensor (MDS) during the laboratory shaking table tests of a three-story steel frame model. The comparative analysis results indicate that the developed vision-based system exhibits excellent performance in structural dynamic displacement measurement by use of the three different image processing algorithms. The field application experiments are also carried out on an arch bridge for the measurement of displacement influence lines during the loading tests to validate the effectiveness of the vision-based system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.679-694
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• 2017

The complexity, enlargement and irregularity of structures and multi-directional dynamic loads acting on the structures can lead to unexpected structural behavior, such as torsion. Continuous torsion of the structure causes unexpected changes in the structure's stress distribution, reduces the performance of the structural members, and shortens the structure's lifespan. Therefore, a method of monitoring the torsional behavior is required to ensure structural safety. Structural torsion typically occurs accompanied by displacement, but no model has yet been developed to measure this type of structural response. This research proposes a model for measuring dynamic torsional response of structure accompanied by displacement and for identifying the torsional modal parameter using vision-based displacement measurement equipment, a motion capture system (MCS). In the present model, dynamic torsional responses including pure rotation and translation displacements are measured and used to calculate the torsional angle and displacements. To apply the proposed model, vibration tests for a shear-type structure were performed. The torsional responses were obtained from measured dynamic displacements. The torsional angle and displacements obtained by the proposed model using MCS were compared with the torsional response measured using laser displacement sensors (LDSs), which have been widely used for displacement measurement. In addition, torsional modal parameters were obtained using the dynamic torsional angle and displacements obtained from the tests.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.415-426
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• 2013

Condition assessment and monitoring of bridges is critical for safe passenger travel, public transportation, and efficient freight. In monitoring, displacement measurement capability is important to keep track of performance of bridge, in part or as whole. One of the most important parts of a bridge is the expansion joint, which accommodates continuous cyclic thermal expansion of the whole bridge. Though expansion joint is critical for bridge performance, its inspection and monitoring has not been considered significantly because the monitoring requires long-term data using cost intensive equipment. Recently, a wireless smart sensor network (WSSN) has drawn significant attention for transportation infrastructure monitoring because of its merits in low cost, easy installation, and versatile on-board computation capability. In this paper, a rapid wireless displacement monitoring system, wireless hybrid sensor (WHS), has been developed to monitor displacement of expansion joints of bridges. The WHS has been calibrated for both static and dynamic displacement measurement in laboratory environment, and deployed on an in-service highway bridge to demonstrate rapid expansion joint monitoring. The test-bed is a continuous steel girder bridge, the Founders Bridge, in East Hartford, Connecticut. Using the WHS system, the static and dynamic displacement of the expansion joint has been measured. The short-term displacement trend in terms of temperature is calculated. With the WHS system, approximately 6% of the time has been spent for installation, and 94% of time for the measurement showing strong potential of the developed system for rapid displacement monitoring.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1126-1132
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• 2009

Bridge structures are designed to support ordinary loadings such as vehicles, wind, temperature and current as well as unexpected loadings like earthquakes and storm. Especially, the displacement of Flexible bridges like an suspension bridge under ordinary loading conditions is necessary to be monitored. In case of long span bridges, there are some difficulties in monitoring the displacement of center of the main span using traditional laser displacement sensors. In this study, the static and dynamic displacement responses due to vehicle loadings were measured by DGPS(differential global positioning system) technique. The displacement response data were compared with data obtained from traditional laser displacement sensors so that the static and dynamic behavior of the bridge under vehicle loadings was examined and the applicability of the displacement response measurement using DGPS technique was verified. The static and dynamic loading test for an self-anchored suspension bridge, So-rok Bridge, was performed using vehicles. The displacement response from DGPS technique and that from laser displacement sensors of the bridge monitoring system were compared. The amplitude of white noise from DGPS based measurement was about 7 mm and that of laser displacement sensor based measurement was about 3 mm. On the other hand, dynamic behavior of the center of main span from DGPS based measurement showed better agreement with influence line of the bridge than that from laser displacement sensors. In addition, there were some irregular and discontinuous variation of data due to the instability of GPS receivers or frequent appearance of GPS satellites. Post-processing via the reference station close to an observation post provided by NGII(National Geographic Information Institute) will be a counter-plan for these defects.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.769-781
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• 2019

Dynamic displacement response of civil structures is an important index for in-construction and in-service structural condition assessment. However, accurately measuring the displacement of large-scale civil structures such as high-rise buildings still remains as a challenging task. In order to cope with this problem, a vision-based system with the use of industrial digital camera and image processing has been developed for long-distance, remote, and real-time monitoring of dynamic displacement of supertall structures. Instead of acquiring image signals, the proposed system traces only the coordinates of the target points, therefore enabling real-time monitoring and display of displacement responses in a relatively high sampling rate. This study addresses the in-situ experimental verification of the developed vision-based system on the Canton Tower of 600 m high. To facilitate the verification, a GPS system is used to calibrate/verify the structural displacement responses measured by the vision-based system. Meanwhile, an accelerometer deployed in the vicinity of the target point also provides frequency-domain information for comparison. Special attention has been given on understanding the influence of the surrounding light on the monitoring results. For this purpose, the experimental tests are conducted in daytime and nighttime through placing the vision-based system outside the tower (in a brilliant environment) and inside the tower (in a dark environment), respectively. The results indicate that the displacement response time histories monitored by the vision-based system not only match well with those acquired by the GPS receiver, but also have higher fidelity and are less noise-corrupted. In addition, the low-order modal frequencies of the building identified with use of the data obtained from the vision-based system are all in good agreement with those obtained from the accelerometer, the GPS receiver and an elaborate finite element model. Especially, the vision-based system placed at the bottom of the enclosed elevator shaft offers better monitoring data compared with the system placed outside the tower. Based on a wavelet filtering technique, the displacement response time histories obtained by the vision-based system are easily decomposed into two parts: a quasi-static ingredient primarily resulting from temperature variation and a dynamic component mainly caused by fluctuating wind load.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.129-150
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• 2018

This paper presents the structural performance monitoring of an urban footbridge located in Hangzhou, China. The structural health monitoring (SHM) system is designed and implemented for the footbridge to monitor the structural responses of the footbridge and to ensure the structural safety during the period of operation. The monitoring data of stress and displacement measured by the fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensors installed at the critical locations are used to analyze and assess the operation performance of the footbridge. A linear regression method is applied to separate the temperature effect from the stress monitoring data measured by the FBG-based strain sensors. In addition, the static vertical displacement of the footbridge measured by the FBG-based hydrostatic level gauges are presented and compared with the dynamic displacement remotely measured by a machine vision-based measurement system. Based on the examination of the monitored stress and displacement data, the structural safety evaluation is executed in combination with the defined condition index.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.133-134
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• 2006

A cylindrical capacitive displacement sensor (CCS) was developed and applied for monitoring end milling processes. Dynamic characteristics of a spindle-assembly were measured using the CCS and a designed magnetic exciter. The technique to extract the spindle displacement component caused only by cutting from the measured signals using the CCS was proposed in the paper. Using CCS signals and FRF (Frequency Response Function) derived from dynamics of the spindle tool system, dynamic cutting forces are estimated quantitatively.